First of all,Would anyone here know how to create a parallel text that could be printed out as a book? Pretty much, how can I make my own Loeb?For example, all of the Greek and Latin church fathers are online with translations, but there are very few parallel texts extant and most are too expensive. It would also be great to make the parallel texts about the same size as the Loebs, for portability.

Second of all,I wonder if it would be possible to make a website that hosted user-created Loebs like this that could be printed out easily.

I'm not sure if your question is about putting the info so it comes out side-by-side, or printing it once you have. For printing it, you could use lulu (lulu.com). Basically, you upload a pdf, design your cover and only have to pay for the printing, which you can do as a single copy (at least, you could the last time I looked at them). Probably costs in the neighborhood of $20 + shipping, which would get you a nicely-bound paperback book. A little more if you want hardcover. The cost varies based upon paper size, quality, binding, etc. I think they have a little wizard that lets you play around with options and calculate the price.

By the way, once you've put it together on lulu, then anyone else can by it, too. You can see what Mingshey did for Euclid's Elements on Lulu: Euclid's Elements. That's a greek-only book, but obviously you don't have to do it that way. His book is $28.28, but it's also 450 pages long and hardcover.

As far as putting two different languages of a text together to be side-by-side when printed, it wouldn't be too hard, but you'd have to do it by hand if you wanted to make sure that the same parts of the texts stayed on the same page, since the translation may be more wordy than the original text. I would imagine having two Word (or whatever) files, and adding them into a third page-by-page, alternating and making sure that the page breaks correspond to the same part of the text. It would probably take less than an hour.

You could use LaTeX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX). LaTeX has a package for that specific purpose. LaTeX also has packages for making an apparatus criticus. LaTeX has everything to typeset beautiful documents (contrary to Word and other "normal" word processors. When you are accustomed to the niceties of LaTeX, you'll realise how ugly Word documents often are).

NuclearWarhead wrote:You could use LaTeX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX). LaTeX has a package for that specific purpose. LaTeX also has packages for making an apparatus criticus. LaTeX has everything to typeset beautiful documents (contrary to Word and other "normal" word processors. When you are accustomed to the niceties of LaTeX, you'll realise how ugly Word documents often are).

I have to admit. I started the download and looked through the materials. I ended up canceling the download. I'm intimidated, too. I will try it when I'm wide awake. I'm afraid of screwing things up, though. That's not a clear-cut thing at all.

The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e might help. It lives up to its name; it's 2+ MB and 150+ pages. Bootlegged versions of Leslie Laport's LaTeX-A Document Preparation System are also floating around out there if you know where to look.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

Anyway, I would say that you shouldn't be intimidated by LaTeX. It might look complicated with commands rather than a shiny interface, but most of the time you will be using the same commands again and again. And when you think about it, there really isn't much of a conceptual difference between, say, emphasizing text by \emph{text} or Ctrl+i text Ctrl+i. In both cases, it is just a command to learn.

NuclearWarhead wrote:Yep, The Not So Short ... is an excellent introduction to LaTeX.

Anyway, I would say that you shouldn't be intimidated by LaTeX. It might look complicated with commands rather than a shiny interface, but most of the time you will be using the same commands again and again. And when you think about it, there really isn't much of a conceptual difference between, say, emphasizing text by \emph{text} or Ctrl+i text Ctrl+i. In both cases, it is just a command to learn.

Yeah, but the commands are just so LONG! In reading an introduction, it said that it's "similar" to HTML, but in HTML the tags are purposefully short. Why not make it some short tag, like HTML? <em>text</em> is so much easier than \emph{text}, in my humble opinion. Does it really need to be so complicated? I'll install it and start working with it soon, but I'm sincerely intimidated. If this is the way that textsetting should be done, however, I'm willing to learn and experiment.

I've got the download to 80% now and I'm about to head out to work. I figure that I'll let it download while I'm not at home, and when I come home this evening I'll sit down and install it and start looking at some tutorials and examples. Can you input Unicode (UTF-8) text directly?

jaihare wrote:Yeah, but the commands are just so LONG! In reading an introduction, it said that it's "similar" to HTML, but in HTML the tags are purposefully short. Why not make it some short tag, like HTML?

You do realize that \emph{} has two fewer characters to type than <em></em>?

LaTeX is a programmable system for typesetting books. Since LaTeX is programmable, you can trivially define convenience markup for yourself. All the PDF texts on aoidoi.org are produced using LaTeX. Just find any poem, and change the URL from ending in .pdf to ending in .tex to see what the LaTeX markup looks like. Here's the preamble to a poem by Mimnermus:

Notice that I define some of my own commands at the bottom. More complex texts may have more of these. For example, the Delectus Indelectatus is formatted differently from most Aoidoi texts, and so requires new definitions.

While old-style LaTeX could cope with Unicode with some tweaking, I'd strongly recommend you look at and download the XeTeX distribution. It speaks Unicode natively, plus it has much nicer tools to use many kinds of fonts.

While old-style LaTeX could cope with Unicode with some tweaking, I'd strongly recommend you look at and download the XeTeX distribution. It speaks Unicode natively, plus it has much nicer tools to use many kinds of fonts.

Old-style LaTeX copes well with Unicode. To use Unicode, you just have to load two packages. How to do that is also described in The Not So Short ...

However, I would warn that the ability to choose "many kinds of fonts" is a temptation for some people, and they shouldn't be allowed to change fonts sometimes because they would choose the wrong fonts. For instance, it would be a disaster if people were choose to use Times, a font for newspapers, not books. (And unfortunately, there are people who do that ... ) Of course, there are times when it is justified, but be wary.

NuclearWarhead wrote:However, I would warn that the ability to choose "many kinds of fonts" is a temptation for some people, and they shouldn't be allowed to change fonts sometimes because they would choose the wrong fonts.

I trust all Textkittens have good typographic taste. Besides, I think Cicero would be improved if presented in Comic Sans.

Typesetting documents using multiple writing systems is hard enough without having one's options artificially cut off to prevent offenses against current typographic fads. XeTeX makes the process of finding and using a good combination of fonts to accomodate all your languages a bit easier, whatever fashion dangers it might present.

You're saying that the system will actually tell me NO about using Times New Roman? How ridiculous is that? It may not be pretty, but it supports all of the possible languages that I would think about using, from polytonic Greek to Hebrew with both nikkud and ta'amim. Would it also say NO to using Arial? Why should a typesetting system have a prejudice against certain fonts?

jaihare wrote:Yeah, but the commands are just so LONG! In reading an introduction, it said that it's "similar" to HTML, but in HTML the tags are purposefully short. Why not make it some short tag, like HTML?

You do realize that \emph{} has two fewer characters to type than <em></em>?

LaTeX is a programmable system for typesetting books. Since LaTeX is programmable, you can trivially define convenience markup for yourself. All the PDF texts on aoidoi.org are produced using LaTeX. Just find any poem, and change the URL from ending in .pdf to ending in .tex to see what the LaTeX markup looks like. Here's the preamble to a poem by Mimnermus:

Notice that I define some of my own commands at the bottom. More complex texts may have more of these. For example, the Delectus Indelectatus is formatted differently from most Aoidoi texts, and so requires new definitions.

While old-style LaTeX could cope with Unicode with some tweaking, I'd strongly recommend you look at and download the XeTeX distribution. It speaks Unicode natively, plus it has much nicer tools to use many kinds of fonts.

I have to admit -- I feel like I know NOTHING about computers after just reading through these pages. I don't even know where to BEGIN!! WOW!

I'm officially installing the TeX Live, since it contains the XeTeX package that allows for Unicode support. It's literally taking hours. I might be doing something wrong, but it's about 50% done now (at least, according to the progress bar, though it has only reached the letter g). If I'm completely screwing up here, will I be able to uninstall this at a later point and just start over? A simple step-by-step would be great, but it doesn't seem that there's any good instructions, since there a billion different packages and releases of this software. I mean, I just took a stab in the dark with the TeX Live thing, not knowing what I'm doing. I hope it will install properly and that I'll be able to start experimenting with the encoding. It's definitely not for the simple minded (or those with no Unix/Linux experience)! I tried Ubuntu on one computer back in the day, and I never figured out even how to install a chat program. It was completely useless to me. I hope this program is better for me.

jaihare wrote:I have to admit -- I feel like I know NOTHING about computers after just reading through these pages. I don't even know where to BEGIN!! WOW!

As I said, the TeX family of programs was originally designed to let people typeset very technical math books. Any powerful program is going to be more complex. However, Aoidoi texts have accumulated a lot of LaTeX tweakery over the years. A much simpler LaTeX document is this:

I have been messing around with LaTeX, and it's not too bad. Just like learning a programming language.

I have a problem, though. Annis, maybe you can help, since you've messed around with LaTeX.

I can't get unicode Greek to show up! I found an editor that allows me to type in unicode, but when I compile (is that the right word for LaTeX) it comes out jumbled. But if I just type in ABCDEFG, then LaTeX will happily output ΑΒΧΔεΦΓ. What am I missing? I have googled and googled, but I can not find the solution to my problem.

Here's what I'm running:VistaMiKTeX 2.7Texmaker

I'm using the header that the "Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX" recommended:

KramerKram wrote:I have been messing around with LaTeX, and it's not too bad. Just like learning a programming language.

Which is what it is, really — a language for producing documents.

I can't get unicode Greek to show up! I found an editor that allows me to type in unicode, but when I compile (is that the right word for LaTeX) it comes out jumbled.

Yeah, this is why I gave up plain LaTeX for XeTeX. LaTeX can use unicode, but it doesn't really understand it. The Babel package needs help to know which language you're in. Try this (note the name I'm using for "greek" which for Babel is Modern Greek):

KramerKram wrote:I have been messing around with LaTeX, and it's not too bad. Just like learning a programming language.

Which is what it is, really — a language for producing documents.

I can't get unicode Greek to show up! I found an editor that allows me to type in unicode, but when I compile (is that the right word for LaTeX) it comes out jumbled.

Yeah, this is why I gave up plain LaTeX for XeTeX. LaTeX can use unicode, but it doesn't really understand it. The Babel package needs help to know which language you're in. Try this (note the name I'm using for "greek" which for Babel is Modern Greek):

If you were to write at document in ancient Greek only, you wouldn't have to switch language either because it would be the standard of the document. It is only when more languages are present. Anyway, to use the correct hyphenation patterns in XeTeX, I am/was led to believe that you would have to do the same in XeTeX (just with other commands), cf. http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/xetex/hyphenation/grchyph/.

None of it really works. Even the manuals, which are supposed to be present on the system, do not open, and the shortcut leads to nothing. It's completely useless. I went through the Control Panel to remove the program, and it doesn't even remove (though it shows up there as installed). I don't know how to get it just to go away so that I can install the MiKTeX program instead. I regret going with TeX Live, and I would take any points about how to get it off the system. Can I just delete the file under Program Files?

I found an uninstall program under ...\texlive\2008\tlpkg\installer. The files are all MS-DOS Batch Files, entitled uninst.bat, uninst2.bat and unshort.bat. I've tried all three of them and had no response at all. Thanks for any help you might offer.

Yours,Jason

P.S. This is my 100th post. I'm officially a "Textkit Member" rather than a "Textkit Neophyte."

Last edited by jaihare on Sat Apr 11, 2009 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, here's a small update. I have installed MiKTeX, and it seems to be correctly installed. I don't seem to have any dead links anyway. Still can't seem to get rid of the TeX Live that I originally installed. Do you think it's safe to delete the whole folder from Program Files?